This tutorial will show how to set samba to allow read-only file sharing for your LAN computers as guest (without be prompted for a password). Because users won't be prompted for a user/password, this tutorial is meant to be installed in a LAN where all host are to be trusted.

There is many advantages of sharing files in a LAN. For instance, when you have a multimedia box (playing music, movies....) it is great to be able to access the music on that box from any machines in your LAN.

Let's get started. In the first place, you need to have samba installed.

$sudo apt-get install samba

Because we are going to make samba security insecure, make sure only your local network can access samba service. To do so, open and edit /etc/samba/smb.conf

$sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

and set interfaces to lo and your local network interface. In my case: eth1.

interfaces = lo eth1
bind interfaces only = true

Now, it is time to smoothen samba default security by changing the security variable: security and make sure it is set to share instead of user and that guest account is enabled:

In essence to get the same effect: If you use "security = user" you must add "map to guest = Bad User".

But if your windows username exists in samba then your password should match or you'll still be asked for it. Sounds like a security problem to me, to have your password kept by windows. You can remove your entry from samba to remain as guest, but then you may still want to log into your own share too ....

I am still having an issues. 1. I have shared several directories (Pictures, Videos, etc) so me, wife and kids can access them. 2. I have my user directory (scott) also in smb.conf but it is not protected from othere access. This should be password protected. I did not encrypt home directories.

How do I restrict access to scott files and not Pictures, Videos, etc?

A couple other things: This is after a new install of Ubuntu 14.04 server on headless HP MediaSmart Server. I execute the following after editing smb.conf > sudo /etc/init.d/samba reload;sudo restart smbd;sudo restart nmbd * Reloading /etc/samba/smb.conf smbd

I created a ~/samba directory but did not add any files to it. Maybe I need to?